Category Archives: Nostalgia

Don Moore’s Photo Album:  Guatemala (Part Three)- Guatemala City Continued

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Don Moore–noted author, traveler, and DXer–for the latest installment of his Photo Album guest post series:


Photo Source: Dennis Sylvester Hurd via Wikimedia Commons

Don Moore’s Photo Album:
Guatemala (Part Three) – Guatemala City continued

by Don Moore

More of Don’s traveling DX stories can be found in his book Tales of a Vagabond DXer [SWLing Post affiliate link]. If you’ve already read his book and enjoyed it, do Don a favor and leave a review on Amazon.

When I started DXing in 1971, and for several decades afterwards, the most widely logged Guatemalan shortwave station by DXers was Radio Cultural on 3300 kHz. It was also known as TGNA, the call letters of that 90-meter-band frequency. The medium wave outlet on 730 kHz was TGN. The station also used 5955 kHz and 9505 kHz, but those frequencies were always harder to hear because of interference from more powerful international broadcasters.

Back then this Evangelical broadcaster was owned and operated by the Central American Mission of Dallas, Texas, but only received a portion of its funding from the CAM. Additional funding came from local donations in Guatemala and another important source was selling time to American Evangelical preachers to air their prerecorded English language religious programs. These programs were broadcast late at night, when propagation into North America and Europe was best, and were always preceded by an English station identification. That made it an easier log for DXers who didn’t understand Spanish.

TGNA was the station I most wanted to visit when I arrived in Guatemala City in June 1983. But Guatemala DX Club members informed me that the station had been temporarily closed down because of “philosophical disagreements” with the government. They were off the air and would remain so for several weeks. I made four more visits to Guatemala City over the next year but somehow never found the time to visit the station. It wasn’t until my visit in December 1987 that I finally stepped inside their front door. That visit became the subject of the first article I wrote for Monitoring Times magazine in June 1988.

Wayne Berger, station manager and chief engineer, and missionary Bob Rice gave us a very long tour of the station. Wayne and Bob had built or rebuilt most of the station’s technical equipment and even some of the infrastructure. On the day we arrived they were welding a broken door back on its hinges. Wayne had built the 3300 kHz transmitter, shown in the next picture, out of spare parts.

Main studio control room at TGNA in 1987.

At the time of my visit, TGNA had two pennants. The larger one was mostly reserved for local listeners. The smaller one was sometimes included with QSLs to lucky DXers.

But neither of those compared with these traditional handmade weavings given by listeners for the station’s 37th anniversary in August, 1987. (I just wish my color photos had survived.)

English ID from Radio Cultural, 3300 kHz, as heard in Pennsylvania 23 November 1979 at 0427 UTC:

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Radio Cultural, 3300 kHz, as heard in Michigan 23 March 1989 at 1101 UTC:

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Easter in Guatemala

Of all the things I’ve seen in my travels, the Easter processions of Guatemala certainly rank near the top. I am fortunate to have been in Guatemala twice for the holiday, in 1982 and 1984, and I plan a return trip in the next few years. Processions take place all over Guatemala during Easter week, but the most elaborate take place on Easter Thursday and Good Friday in Guatemala City and, especially, in Antigua, the old capital twenty kilometers to the west. There are several processions both days in each city and each procession takes several hours. Continue reading

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Don Moore’s Photo Album:  Guatemala (Part Two) – Guatemala City

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Don Moore–noted author, traveler, and DXer–for the latest installment of his Photo Album guest post series:


Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

Don Moore’s Photo Album:  Guatemala (Part Two) – Guatemala City

by Don Moore

More of Don’s traveling DX stories can be found in his book Tales of a Vagabond DXer [SWLing Post affiliate link]. If you’ve already read his book and enjoyed it, do Don a favor and leave a review on Amazon.

Guatemala City, the country’s capital, is the political, economic, and social hub of the country. The next largest city, Quetzaltenango, is less than a fifth as big. Guatemala City also forms a pivot point dividing the country. The departments to the west and the Verapaz region to the north are heavily indigenous. Quiché department is named after the country’s largest Mayan group. The Pacific departments to the south and those to the east are mostly populated by Spanish-speaking ladinos, which is what mestizos of mixed Spanish and indigenous heritage are called in Guatemala. It’s the ladinos and Guatemala’s small European-descended upper class who rule the country. Although the Mayans and a few smaller groups represent half of Guatemala’s population, the country has never had an indigenous president. That’s not where the power lies.

While I was working in Honduras, all of my visits to Guatemala included a few days in Guatemala City. It wouldn’t make anyone’s lists of Latin America’s best capitals but I always enjoyed returning. It felt like a city. Honduras’ capital of Tegucigalpa felt like an overgrown small town.

Guatemala City had a very diverse radio scene with stations programming for all the segments of the population. You could tune in everything from Guatemalan marimba music to English-language rock to Spanish-language romantic pop to Mexican ranchera to Argentine tango. There was even a commercial classical music station on medium wave. Several of the stations – Radio Nuevo Mundo comes to mind – had very professional news departments. And three of Guatemala City’s radio stations broadcast on shortwave.

But for me the best part of visiting Guatemala City wasn’t the shopping or the museums or even visiting the radio stations. It was getting to see my friends in the Guatemala DX Club.

Guatemala DX Club

In early 1983 I connected with the Guatemala DX Club through Radio Netherlands’ Spanish language DX program, Radio Enlace.  I first got together with them on my second visit to Guatemala in June 1983 and then made a point of visiting them every time I came to the city. The GDXC had several dozen members, mostly in Guatemala City. Only about eight or ten regularly participated in club events and those are the ones I met. The club had occasional meetings, sometimes organized visits to radio stations, and published an annual newsletter. They also produced a weekly fifteen-minute DX program on La Voz de Guatemala.

This photo was taken during my last visit in December 1987. In the back row are Carlos Zipfel Valencia, Jorge Luis Álvarez, and Edgar Oliva. Me and Ralf Gruner are seated in front.

Edgar was an official monitor for Deutsche Welle and had a beautiful huge Grundig receiver that the station had gifted to him. It had been sent by diplomatic pouch to the West German embassy where he had picked it up in person.

Carlos’ father, Carlos Zipfel y García, was a well-known Guatemalan writer but Carlos was more interested in the spoken word of radio. After getting a communications degree he received professional training through programs run by Radio Netherlands and Deutsche Welle and pursued a career in broadcast journalism and management. At different times he’s served as a producer for La Voz de Guatemala, director of Radio Universidad de San Carlos, and in various roles for several public and non-government organizations such as the Federation of Guatemalan Radio Schools.

I’ve always liked the GDXC pennant. It was intentionally designed to point left so that it would easily fit on the wall between the usual right-pointing radio station pennants. Only a DXer would think of doing that! The design features Guatemala’s national bird, the quetzal, which is known for its long tail feathers.

La Voz de Guatemala

During my first visit with the club, Carlos used his day off to take me to visit the radio station he was working at plus several more medium wave and FM stations. He already had many professional contacts so I had some very memorable station tours. Carlos also used his press credentials to get me a private tour of part of the Palacio Verde, or presidential palace.

The station I was most interested in seeing was the official government radio station, TGW La Voz de Guatemala, also sometimes called Radio Nacional de Guatemala. I had a very long visit there as Carlos, of course, had connections. It was he who produced the club’s weekly DX program on TGW.

The Estudio Maya was a spacious room where live marimba music concerts were broadcast each week. The station even had its own handmade marimba. The use of the name Estudio Maya is interesting. Guatemala embraces the historical image and importance of the Mayans while at the same time ignoring the present-day Mayan population. Half of Guatemala’s population speak Mayan languages but the national radio station only broadcast in Spanish.

Visiting radio stations usually includes collecting souvenirs and TGW didn’t disappoint. Here are several items from the station’s 50th anniversary in 1980. I also picked up several QSLs signed and sealed not just by the head station producer but also by Carlos on behalf of the Guatemala DX Club.

TGW La Voz de Guatemala, 640 kHz, as recorded in Guatemala City in June 1983:

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A Musical Interlude

The marimba is Guatemala’s national musical instrument and if you ever heard one of Guatemala’s shortwave stations you surely heard the music. Like the banjo, the marimba is an instrument that always sounds happy. It’s impossible to play a sad song on one. The instrument is like a xylophone but is made of wood. Although smaller ones do exist, a true marimba requires seven musicians playing in unison. A live concert is an amazing sight. Continue reading

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PDF Copy of Utility DXer’s Handbook from 1971

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Dan Greenall, who writes:

Hi Thomas

Back in December, I reported on the SWLing Post that I had made the Utility DXer’s Handbook from 1971 available online via the Internet Archive.

I am now pleased to report that I have added a PDF file for this out of print publication, in addition to the existing JPEG format.

It can be found via the same link to my archive.org page at:

https://archive.org/details/udxh-page-66-and-67_202408

73
Dan Greenall
Thank you for archiving and sharing this guide with us, Dan!
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Carlos Explores the Sony ICR-N20: A Unique Radio Nikkei Experience from Brazil

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Carlos Latuff, who shares the following guest post:


SONY ICR-N20 Quick Review

by Carlos Latuff

In the last century, several Japanese electronics manufacturers such as Sony, National-Panasonic, Hitachi, and Sanyo produced radio receivers aimed at the Japanese public and which had a peculiar characteristic: they came with crystal lock, preset frequencies from Radio Nikkei, which in the past was known by the acronym NSB (Nihon Shortwave Broadcasting) or “Radio Tampa”. For more information about this station, check out this post.

One of these models is the Sony ICR-N20, which, based on the date of the instruction manual I found on the Internet, must have been produced in the late 1990s. The device measures 150 mm × 75 mm × 36 mm and weighs 400 grams (with batteries). It has a 6.6 cm speaker (8 ohms) and a headphone output.

This device is analog and operates on the following frequencies:

Shortwave:

  • NSB1 3.925 MHz, 6.055 MHz, 9.595 MHz
  • NSB2 3.945 MHz, 6.115 MHz, 9.760 MHz
  • MW: 530 kHz ? 1.605 kHz

Currently, Radio Nikkei only broadcasts on two frequencies: 6.055 and 6.115 MHz.

It has a 7-segment telescopic antenna. No input for an external antenna.

It works on electrical power (DC 4.5 V) or 3 AA batteries.

As it’s primarily intended for the Japanese market, the buttons and dial panel are written in Japanese.

I have no complaints about the selectivity and sensitivity of the Sony ICR-N20 when it comes to medium waves. At night, in Porto Alegre (in the extreme south of Brazil), it was possible to receive (indoor) stations from Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina, but due to its proximity to these countries, this is not such a difficult task. It’s not a receiver for the most ardent DX fan, but it does a good job of being a radio for regular, everyday listening.

In the case of shortwave, I was able to receive the signal from Radio Nikkei 1 and 2 close to the Guaiba waterfront. The signal from active frequencies is weak, but audible. With favorable propagation, the reception is sometimes surprising. Following the instructions in the instruction manual, I used a long wire antenna for better reception.

In my region, the most favorable propagation window is between 08:45 and 09:15 (UTC), and yesterday, for example, February 7, 2025, the signal reached well until 10:00 (UTC). On other frequencies, it is even possible to hear other stations, such as China Radio International, and even amateur radio interference. Remember that this is not a radio receiver with all shortwave frequency bands, but only those in which Nikkei Radio 1 and 2 operate.

Here are some of the listenings made with this receiver.

Radio Nikkei 1: February 7, 2025

Radio Nikkei 1: February 7, 2025

Radio Nikkei 1: February 4, 2025

Listening Session Video

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Don Moore’s Photo Album: Guatemala (Part One) – The East

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Don Moore–noted author, traveler, and DXer–for the latest installment of his Photo Album guest post series:


Don Moore’s Photo Album: Guatemala (Part One) – The East

by Don Moore

More of Don’s traveling DX stories can be found in his book Tales of a Vagabond DXer [SWLing Post affiliate link]. If you’ve already read his book and enjoyed it, do Don a favor and leave a review on Amazon.

I’ve wanted to do a feature on Guatemala ever since starting this series a few years ago. From a cultural perspective it’s one of the most fascinating countries in Latin America. About half the population are indigenous, primarily Mayan, and most of them still speak their own languages. For several decades Guatemala’s religious broadcasters – Roman Catholic and Evangelical Protestant – used many of those languages on shortwave where we DXers were able to hear them.

I made five visits to Guatemala from 1982 to 1984 while in the Peace Corps in Honduras and returned in December 1987 while in graduate school. I spent enough time in Guatemala that there’s an entire section of my Vagabond DXer book filled with stories of my travels and station visits. In this seven-part series you get to see the pictures.

The map below shows the country, minus the sparsely populated northern department of Petén. We’re going to start in the least interesting part of Guatemala, the east. There’s very little indigenous culture left in that region nor much else of interest to the visitor. But you do have to pass through it to get from Honduras to the rest of Guatemala … and there were some radio stations to visit.

The main border crossing between Honduras and Guatemala has always been near Esquipulas in southern Chiquimula department. (That’s where the header photo comes from). But about 40 kilometers to the north is a secondary crossing near the town of Jocotán. In the 1980s, the road was rough and unpaved and the best mode of transportation was hitching a ride in the back of a passing pickup truck. The border consisted of just two wooden shacks, one on each side, minded by bored soldiers. That’s where I entered Guatemala on my second visit in June 1983. Jocotán had a radio station that I wanted to visit.

Eastern Guatemala may not have had much of interest, but the large Mayan ruins of Copán are just across the border in Honduras. The most direct route there from Guatemala City is via Jocotán so typically a few backpackers pass through town every day. I found a room at the Pension Ramirez. At $1.50 a night it was the perfect place for Peace Corps Volunteers, backpackers, and others at the very bottom end of the budget travel scale. I got a bed with sheets that may have been washed within the past week, a table, a chair, and a dim light bulb hanging from the ceiling. The shared bathroom was down the hall. Cold water only. But the Pension Ramirez had one thing that I never encountered at any other such lodging. The owner had a business card.

Jocotán was home to Radio Chortís, a Roman Catholic broadcaster that mostly ministered to the Chortí Indians who lives in the region. As most of the Chortí had assimilated into the dominant Spanish culture the station primarily broadcast in Spanish with just a few hours in the Chortí language each week. Radio Chortís used to put a strong signal into North America on 3380 kHz. The station was part of a mission funded by donations from Belgian and West German Catholics. The studios and offices were in a large complex that also included vocational training facilities and a print shop for the church. That explained why the back of their QSL letters always had a colorful station graphic.

Radio Chortís, 3380 kHz, as heard in Pennsylvania 30 December 1979 at 1152 UTC:

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On to Cobán

Early the next morning, I took a bus to Chiquimula, the departmental capital. DXers may recognize the town as the location of Radio Verdad, the last active shortwave broadcast station in Central America. It came on the air long after my time there so I never got to visit the station. In Chiquimula I switched to a bus bound for Guatemala City, but that wasn’t my final destination. I got off at a little crossroads just before the town of El Progreso and then boarded the next bus heading north to Cobán, capital of Alta Verapaz.

In Cobán I planned to visit another Catholic broadcaster, but one with a rather unusual name for a religious station. In the 1520s, the Spanish conquistadores quickly overran most of Guatemala but the Kekchi Indians in their mountainous homeland proved impossible to defeat. The Spanish dubbed the region Tezulutlán from an archaic Spanish phrase that meant “Land of War.”

In the 1540s, the Spanish tried another method to subdue the region, this time allowing Dominican friars under Bartolomé de las Casas to attempt to convert the Kekchi to Catholicism. Where the soldiers had failed the padres succeeded and the newly pacified region was renamed Verapaz, or Land of True Peace. Bartolomé de las Casas was a good man who left a legacy of trying to protect the rights of the Indians in a time of brutal conquest. But he was just one man in a time of boundless greed. He left the region a few years later and the Kekchi were forced into peonage just as the Mayans elsewhere in Guatemala had been.

And so four centuries later when the Roman Catholic diocese in Verapaz, the land of true peace, set up a radio station they named it Radio Tezulutlán, after the land of war. Someone had a keen sense of irony. But maybe there is something symbolic there as well. The Kekchi, after all, have survived as a people with their own language intact. Today they number over half-a-million, or almost eight percent of the Guatemalan people. That Radio Tezulutlán broadcasts primarily in Kekchi, not Spanish, might just be a final victory for the Kekchi.

The next few pictures show the Radio Tezulutlán building and studio from 1983 and the QSL card and pennant that I picked up on my visit. The QSL was for their little-used frequency of 3370 kHz. They mostly used 4835 kHz.

Radio Tezulutlán, 4835 kHz, as heard in Pennsylvania on 24 December 1979 at 1153 UTC:

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More Broadcasters in Verapaz

In Santa Bárbara, Honduras, where I was living in 1983, one of the best heard Guatemalan medium wave stations was Cobán’s Radio Norte on 680 kHz. I stopped by in the evening hoping to pick up a QSL but the only person there was a lone announcer who was too busy to help me. I may not have gotten the QSL but I did pick up something that I’ve since come to see as even more valuable.

In my book, I explain how one of the primary sources of income for small town radio stations in that era was reading personal announcements and greetings on the air. The Radio Norte announcer had a stack of forms that listeners had filled out with messages to be read on the air. He was throwing away some that had already been read, so I took one.

The form could be either mailed to the station or hand-delivered, as this one apparently was. The message is a birthday greeting from Imelda to her son Mario Agusto. At the top, the date the message is to be read is listed and the place is listed as San Juan Chamelco. This is important as the announcer would first say something like “Atención! San Juan Chamelco!” to get the attention of listeners in that town. At the bottom are instructions as to when the announcement should be read – the 18:30 marimba music show. The form is a very unique radio station souvenir. I only wish I had taken the entire pile out of the trashcan.

Radio Norte, 680 kHz, recorded in Cobán during my June 1983 visit:

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I also made a side trip to the neighboring town of San Pedro Carchá where I got a sort-of-QSL from Radio Imperial on 925 kHz. If you’ve read my book you know that a picture of the secretary would be a lot more interesting than this one of the front door.

A New Shortwave Station

For thirteen years the Roman Catholic church and Radio Tezulutlán had the Kekchi language airwaves all to themselves. But Evangelical Protestantism had been gaining ground in Guatemala for several decades and in 1988 the Evangelical station Radio Kekchi began broadcasting on the shortwave frequency of 4845 kHz. Radio Kekchi must have had friends at the Ministry of Communication as that assigned frequency was just 10 kHz above Radio Tezulutlán’s 4835 kHz. That certainly made it easier to poach listeners from the competition.

In one more bit of strangeness, Radio Kekchi was located sixty-five kilometers northeast of Cobán in the town of Fray Bartolomé de las Casas. So the Evangelical radio station was put in a place named after the priest who originally converted the Kekchi to Catholicism. Maybe the region should be renamed The Land of Irony.

Radio Kekchí, 4845 kHz, as heard in Ohio on 5 September 1988:

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Language or Dialect?

In much of the common literature about Guatemala it says that the indigenous people speak Mayan dialects. And back in the day when these stations were active on shortwave, DXers’ loggings often referred to hearing Mayan dialects. But I called Chortí and Kekchi languages, not dialects. What’s the difference?

Linguistically, a dialect is a regional variation of a language. The different dialects of a language are always mutually intelligible. American and Britons speak different dialects of English but have no trouble understanding one another except for the occasional confusion over a word or phrase. Speakers of Spanish and Portuguese can understand one another a little bit but not enough to have a real conversation. Those are distinct languages.

On the other hand, Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes have no trouble carrying on a conversation with each speaking their own language. That’s because linguistically they are speaking dialects of the same language. So why are Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish considered different languages? Linguist Max Weinrich once explained “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” He might have added an economy, a government, and international respect.

Languages spoken by people who are held in low prestige are often called dialects not for any linguistic reason but simply out of prejudice. It’s a subtle way of indicating these people and their culture are of less importance. This is true not only of Guatemala’s indigenous languages but of many others around the world. Chortí, Kekchi, Quiché, Cakchiquel, and all the other two dozen indigenous languages of Guatemala are just as distinct from one another as are Spanish, French, and Italian. So show them some respect. Call them languages, not dialects.

A DX Oddity

Let’s end part one of this series with an unusual bit of radio history. Aeronautical beacons are stations that broadcast a short morse code identifier over and over. Pilots use them for direction finding in lining up with the runway during bad weather. Today these are only found in the longwave band but there used to be a handful of Latin American beacons on frequencies just above the old top of the medium wave band. One of those was RAB on 1613 kHz at Rabinal, about 45 kilometers south of Cobán. It used to be an easy catch all over North America, but here’s a recording I made of it in nearby Honduras.

Beacon RAB, 1613 kHz, as heard in Santa Bárbara, Honduras, on 12 November 1982 at 0508 UTC:

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Next: Part Two – Guatemala City

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First Look Inside the Updated and Upgraded VOA Museum

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor David, who shares the following news items via WVXU and Spectrum News:


A first look inside the renovated VOA Broadcasting Museum (WVXU)

Visitors to the National Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting in West Chester Township will notice the first improvement immediately after turning into the driveway off Tylersville Road.

New pavement covers the old potholes.

That’s just one of many enhancements at the 1942 VOA building thanks to $500,000 from the state of Ohio. The museum reopens this weekend (Jan. 25-26) after a seven-month renovation with a reconfigured exhibition space, more TV monitors, a revamped Cincinnati broadcasting area, and new lighting, carpeting, drop ceilings, and heating and air conditioning systems.

“It’s now beginning to look like a real museum. This is a major, major, major, major infrastructure improvement,” says Jack Dominic, museum executive director.

“This changes everything. We’ve got heat and air conditioning, and carpeting everywhere. We now have a building that is up to code and able to be a welcoming place for all visitors. We don’t have to apologize any more.” [Continue reading…]

New sounds, exhibits shine at the National VOA Museum of Broadcasting (Spectrum News)

CINCINNATI — These days, it’s easy to take communication technology for granted.

We open our phones and there’s the daily news. We get in our car and we’re connected to any type of programming imaginable, and our devices can bring us just about any livestream from across the world at a moment’s notice.

However, it wasn’t all that long ago that communication was a lot different.

After a six-month closure for renovations, the National Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting is back open.

“We kind of call it the ‘Cincinnati Wing’ and it’s kind of a history of broadcasting in Cincinnati going all the way back to Powel Crosley,” said the museum’s Executive Director Jack Dominic as he gave a tour. [Continue reading…]

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